Bryan lifted a particularly garish shirt from one of the sale racks and held it up to the emergency lights. The collar was green and the sleeves were purple, the buttons white along a piping of blue.

“Wow,” he said.

“That’s one of my favorites,” she said.

“Maybe I’ll try it on,” he said.

“Go for it,” she said. “Fitting rooms are right over there.”

Bryan entered the dressing room and located an overhead light and emerged moments later newly garbed. The sleeves were much too long and draped over his knuckles, the silky fabric shaping to the swells of his shoulders. The jeans he had selected were also much too big, and the cuffs collected thickly around his ankles like elephant skin. When he walked, the fabric swished between his legs, but he still managed to box and karate chop with himself in the mirror.

“Nice,” Kendra said.

“It’s my new look,” he said. “You like it?”

“I think you could do better.”

“Huh. Maybe.” Bryan shuffled around the store in search of another outfit. Kendra, not to be outdone, jumped from the counter and browsed the clothes, too.

She selected a few items from the sale rack and entered the stall next to the one Bryan was using. She latched the door and turned on the light and slipped off her shoes, then her pants, and eyed the pile of clothes she had deposited on the bench. One stall over, she heard Bryan return and latch his own door.

Kendra sifted through her clothes but had trouble making a decision about what to wear. Standing there, almost naked, feeling the public air brushing her body, she found herself thinking mainly about Bryan, and his naked body just a few feet away. Only a thin wall separated them, and she had to wonder if he was thinking about her own body, too. Listening to his clothes fall on the floor, the zip and rustle and shifting of weight, seeing her own bare flesh in the mirror, her slim shoulder and clavicle, the bumps of her nipples in her beige bra, the possibility of something happening seemed not impossible. The belated recognition of their total privacy hit her hard, a near nausea of anticipation.

“I’ve been needing a new look,” Bryan said over the wall. “This one might be it.”

“You already have a good look,” she said.

“I don’t have a look.”

“Yeah you do.”

“What’s my look?”

“I don’t know. You have a kind of hunter look. You look like an outdoor guy. The flannel shirts. The hiking boots.”

“That’s funny. I’m not one. I’ve never hunted.”

“Here, put this on,” she said, and tossed over a pale blue cardigan.

Moments later, the two emerged from their respective stalls, Bryan in five sweaters, leather gloves, long underwear, and plaid madras shorts from the sale rack; Kendra in a two-piece bathing suit under a down jacket with argyle socks.